The Hugging Face Hack Wasn't What It Was Cracked Up to Be
Thread
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
The Hugging Face Hack Wasn't What It Was Cracked Up to Be
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
falaki · · focus · HN ↗
- It was done by two institutes with organizational ties to OpenAI: METR and Redwood Research
- METR and Redwood Research are institutional pillars of the "AI Safety" wing of the Effective Altruism movement. This clearly shows their prior biases towards "AI existential risk" rather than technical/engineering root-causing of the incident
- If you reed the report, it is not on-par with what you find from other companies.
- The access that was given to both was mediated and controlled by OpenAI. It is not clear, if they were able to get to the bottom of engineering flaws. It is not clear if they could see all the audit logs, etc.
Considering all the above, I consider the whole episode more of a PR stunt. I understand that is not a majority opinion at this point.
bryan0 · · focus · HN ↗
Serious question though because I’ve seen this brought up several times and I don’t understand why: what does EA have to do with any of this? It just seems like this is brought up to evoke some type of “illuminati” conspiracy. Is there a legitimate reason?
xelxebar · · focus · HN ↗
TIL my brain is an Olympic gymnast.
The incentive structures are clearly there. I think the case of intentional manufacture is definitely weaker, requiring the conjunction of more weakly-supported events.